Embracing God’s Creation in Winter

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Ps. 19:1 NIV)

I was born and raised in Michigan, where winters are cold and snowy. I remember feeling like Randy from A Christmas Story when I was a child, bundled up in so many thick layers that I could barely move. When my husband and I relocated to Northern Virginia with our newborn daughter nine years ago, I thought milder winters would be a relief. And they were–for a time. Then we moved to the real South: Memphis, Tennessee, where we stayed for the next seven years. Winter in Memphis is damp and dreary, like a long Midwestern November. It’s often too chilly to enjoy being outside, and there’s little beauty to recommend the season. Just bare trees and drenching rains and a dampness that seeps into your bones. Summers are equally unenjoyable. The humidity hovers in the 80-90 percent range, with temperatures into the nineties. It looks pretty, but I found it physically unpleasant. Not much of a tradeoff in weather.

We moved back home to Michigan this past fall, and as the leaves turned every shade of gold, orange, and crimson, I felt like my very soul was drinking in the beauty of it. I hadn’t forgotten autumn, but I hadn’t seen her show off her glory in such a way in close to a decade. And then, the first snow fell.

We live a scant half hour from Lake Michigan, so we get a considerable amount of lake effect snow. At some point nearly every day, the air swirls with flakes. Our house sits on four-and-a-half acres of rolling pastures and woods, and the northern border of our property is lined with thickets in which multitudes of birds and small mammals–rabbits, possums–take shelter. Herds of deer and wild turkeys run rampant across our land at all times of day and night.

My favorite mornings are those when I waken to find fresh snow has fallen in the night, and the tree limbs are blanketed in white, calling to mind images of Narnia before the ousting of the White Witch. As the sun rises, it lights up the earth with an ethereal glow. I step outside to fill the birdfeeder, get the mail, or sweep the snow from the porch, and the air is crisp and clean in my lungs. I bundle up my daughters, and we tramp through the snow to the farthest pasture, passing beneath stately cedar trees and through our small apple orchard, over the slopes and past the blueberry and raspberry patches, asleep beneath their own comforters of downy white. It’s magical.

On sunny days (which mean even colder air, thanks to Arctic exposure), I turn my face into the sun or curl up in a patch of light near a window to read or knit, savoring the warmth. I brew hot coffee and peach tea lattes in the afternoons and take full advantage of the two gas fireplaces that grace our living spaces. I layer wool socks and slippers against the chill of the hardwood floors with a smile. At dinner, I light beeswax tapers and enjoy the flickering candlelight against the background of the darkening sky outside.

I have never reveled in the glory of winter this way.

C. S. Lewis wrote in That Hideous Strength,

“Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as your grow up. Noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children–and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”

Please join me over at The Glorious Table to read more.